We study transactions that require investments before trading in a competitive market, when forward contracts fixing the transaction price are absent. We show that, despite the market being perfectly competitive and subject to arbitrarily little uncertainty, the inability to jointly determine...

We study transactions that require investments before trading in a competitive market, when forward contracts fixing the transaction price are absent. We show that, despite the market being perfectly competitive and subject to arbitrarily little uncertainty, the inability to jointly determine...

We examine an economy in which the cost of consuming some goods can be reduced by making commitments that reduce flexibility. We show that such consumption commitments can induce consumers with risk-neutral underlying utility functions to be risk averse over small variations in income, but...

We examine an economy in which the cost of consuming some goods can be reduced by making commitments that reduce flexibility. We show that such consumption commitments can induce consumers with risk-neutral underlying utility functions to be risk averse over small variations in income, but...

Different markets are cleared by different types of prices---seller-specific prices that are uniform across buyers in some markets, and personalized prices tailored to the buyer in others. We examine a setting in which buyers and sellers make investments before matching in a competitive market....

Consider two agents who learn the value of an unknown parameter by observing a sequence of private signals. Will the agents commonly learn the value of the parameter, i.e., will the true value of the parameter become approximate common-knowledge? If the signals are independent and identically...

We examine an economy in which the cost of consuming some goods can be reduced by making commitments that reduce flexibility. We show that such consumption commitments can induce consumers with risk-neutral underlying utility functions to be risk averse over small variations in income, but...

Consider two agents who learn the value of an unknown parameter by observing a sequence of private signals. The signals are independent and identically distributed across time but not necessarily across agents. We show that that when each agent's signal space is finite, the agents will commonly...

For games of public reputation with uncertainty over types and imperfect public monitoring, Cripps, Mailath, and Samuelson (2004) showed that an informed player facing short-lived uninformed opponents cannot maintain a permanent reputation for playing a strategy that is not part of an...

People often consume non-durable goods in a way that seems inconsistent with preferences for smoothing consumption over time. We suggest that such patterns of consumption can be better explained if one takes into account the memories that consumption generates. A memorable good, such as a...